Day: January 14, 2012

It is very much a sign of the times that £50,000 is not a great deal of money to a football club in trouble playing in the fifth division of the English league system these days. An ongoing debate over the eventual destination of precisely this amount of money, however, seems to be throwing a spanner into the works of an attempt to rescue Darlington Football Club this weekend, and this isn’t the only area into which it could be regarded as having a malign influence. What does or doesn’t happen to this money might yet come to permanently tarnish the future of football in the town. In some respects, yesterday was a reasonably successful day for the club. In spite of the apocalyptic warnings of the club’s joint administrator, Harvey Madden, earlier in the week, close of business on Friday afternoon came and went without what the club’s supporters had been dreading more than anything else, an announcement that the club could no longer continue to trade and would be wound up, coming to pass. The loss of two players to fellow Blue Square Premier club Gateshead was an unwelcome – but unsurprising – development but, by the end of normal business hours, Darlington Football Club continued to exist and supporters of the club have had to grateful for small mercies of late. Any hopes that they might...